


The Smell of Phlogiston in the Morning

by Sturzkampf



Category: Widdershins (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 22:35:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6302839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sturzkampf/pseuds/Sturzkampf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Whatever happened to the Sailfin?</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Smell of Phlogiston in the Morning

**Author's Note:**

> _This story is set soon after the end of ‘Find the Lady’ and contains minor spoilers._   
>  _From the Q &A and the extra story in the print version of 'Find the Lady', published after this was posted, Mr Cunningham is OOC and this doesn't fit with canon. Ho hum. The perils of being a fan fiction writer._

“Vic, y’ol’ Cunningham! How y’doin’?!”

Victor Cunningham jumped at the sudden shout, made a smear of ink across the intricate incantation he was drawing and ruined a morning’s work.

“Barber!” he sighed, without turning round, “You’re still alive. How very vexing.” He screwed up the expensive piece of parchment he had been working on and threw it into the waste paper basket.

“Don’t be like that Vic,” exclaimed Henry, “Thought you’d be pleased to see me! I brought the Sailfin back undamaged.” That caught Victor’s attention. He turned round and scowled at the small figure who had barged unannounced and uninvited into his workshop as though he owned it.

“Seriously? Completely undamaged?”

“More or less. So, one of the sails did get a bit torn. And we broke one of the wings. And we did land a bit ‘eavy like, once or twice. But nothin’ that you’d call _damage_. Oh and it may ‘ave the odd bullet hole or two. But we patched it up a’right.”

Victor muttered an obscenity under his breath and strode out into the yard where, to his surprise, his Sailfin was, indeed, sitting more or less undamaged. The pretty girl who had been with Henry when he had ‘borrowed’ it was examining the port wing. He had not really expected to see either the girl or the flying boat in one piece again. He had conflicting emotions about that; he was pleased that his masterpiece had been returned, but now the girl would want her excellent library back.

“I think I’ve managed to repair the damage,” the girl said, indicating the patched wing. Victor noted that, unlike Barber, she did at least have the common decency to look embarrassed at returning his wonderful invention in less than pristine condition. ‘She’s far too good for Barber,’ he thought. He looked over the repairs. The workmanship was surprisingly well done. The main sail had been patched with a neat cross-stich and the bullet hole in the hull had been plugged. The broken wing spar had been replaced with the correct type of wood and the new magic circle had been drawn on the canvas with precision.

“I see you managed to copy my incantations back onto the wing,” he told the girl.

“I did not just copy them!” exclaimed Isabelle Holt. “I am quite capable of understanding and formulating my own incantations”.

“I’m impressed. Those are intricate diagrams. If you can follow them then you must be a fellow Widdershins alumni.”

“No, not as such. I’m still hoping they’ll admit me. I’m mostly self-taught. With a lot of help from…”

Victor rolled his eyes and turned to Henry, ignoring Isabelle. “Honestly Barber, I know you have no sense whatsoever, but I would have thought even you would not have been so stupid as to risk flying my Sailfin after it had been repaired by a hedge-wizard!” He walked back into his workshop in disgust, reflecting that the girl was probably quite good enough for Barber after all. Isabelle was left staring at his departing back in impotent fury. Henry Barber was never the wisest of men, but he did have the sense to never admit to anyone how cute he thought Isabelle looked when she was angry. This was fortunate, as he would be seeing that expression quite a lot over the next fifty years.

Victor came back outside, pulling the Sailfin’s wheeled trolley. Henry climbed into the boat and with more skill than you might expect flew the vessel back into its cradle. He stayed on board and directed Victor and Isabelle as they stowed the wing booms and sails and then wheeled the Sailfin back into the workshop.

“So why’s this thing so important anyway?” Henry asked once they were safely back inside.

“Why is it important? The Sailfin will make my fortune!” declared Victor. “Soon the skies will be full of flying ships and I own all the key patents! I’ll make so much money I won’t been able to work out what to spend it all on.”

“Isn’t it a little dangerous for everyday use?” asked Henry, “not to say expensive. All those fancy inks can’t be cheap, an’ that’s before you’ve paid some wizard to scribble all the magic circles an’ stuff on the sails.”

 “You have no idea of marketing do you?” sneered Victor. “A ridiculously expensive, insanely dangerous device that flies faster than a horse can gallop and impresses the girls? It will be the essential accessory for every rich young gentleman in Britain!”

“You honestly think having one of these will impress the girls?” asked Henry, showing sudden interest.

“Of course! Look at the effect it had on your latest conquest! Once I have solved the problems with the steering, I will be ready to start sales to the general public.”

“Problems with the steering?” cried Isabelle, who was still fuming at Victor’s snub. “Oh, so you were happy to let us risk our lives flying it then?”

“Trust me, you were in far greater danger from Barber’s flying than any minor glitches in the rudder mechanism. Anyway, had anything gone wrong, I assumed I’d merely be saving you from a fate worse than death.”

“I am quite capable of making my own decisions regarding my personal life, thank you very… what do you mean, ‘latest conquest’?!”

“Ah, I think we should go and check out the Vardo – and our, I mean your nice new horse, said Henry, making for the door.

“I will come with you, if only to see you safely off the premises and make sure you don’t borrow or tamper with anything that does not belong to you.”

“But Vic ol’ boy, don’t you trust me?” asked Henry, idly picking up an intricate device from a workbench.

“No, not at all, not in any shape or form. _Don’t touch that!_ ” Victor snatched the device from Henry’s grasp and escorted his guest outside.

Meanwhile, Isabelle was forcing down her anger, as she had done far too often in the past. Although she would have dearly loved to club Mr Cunningham unconscious with a large piece of wood, she had been through all this before and knew that this would be counterproductive. Apart from the annoying complications of police proceedings and a summons for assault, Victor Cunningham and people like him were exactly who she had to persuade and impress if she was ever to be admitted to Widdershins University, or, if the worse came to the worst, Oxford or Cambridge. Of course there was the also the option of getting angry and shouting, but Isabelle had learned that although this might work if she were a man, as a woman she was likely to be dismissed as a hysterical female and after that he would never take her seriously again.

Anyway, Mr Cunningham was right, she was a self-taught wizard - a hedge-wizard - and they were usually a menace to themselves and those around them and were more than anything else responsible for bringing the profession of wizardry into disrepute. The disdain of other wizards was understandable. If she wanted to achieve her goals she needed to supress her indignation and show him that she was not merely some incompetent who spent her time creating malforms with half-understood summons, but was a descendent of the last witch of Widdershins; that she was a responsible and skilled practitioner of the ancient art who had received proper, if informal, instruction. As they walked over to the main house where her Vardo had been parked, she resolved to engage Mr Cunningham in intelligent wizardly conversation. Flattery was always a good place to start.

“I was very impressed with the design of the Sailfin,” she told him. “I see you used Delight reinforced with Determination to provide the uplift, with Enthusiasm to deliver the forward push. The way that you used Procrastination in opposition to energise and motivate the Enthusiasm was particularly clever. We would have taken forever to get anywhere without that conflict to provide sufficient impetus.”

“I did explain all that to you before you left if you remember,” sneered Victor, “but that was when I thought you were a wizard. Perhaps I need to say it all again, only using short sentences and easy words.” Isabelle reviewed her decision not to give Mr Cunningham concussion, but in the end gamely pressed on.

“Of course, if I were to have the opportunity of formal training, I’m sure it all be much clearer,” she said through smiling gritted teeth. “There is one thing puzzling me that perhaps you could explain. How do you deal with all the excess phlogiston that the resistance of the Procrastination to the Enthusiasm will generate? I didn’t notice any significant heating during the flight and there’s no chimney or radiators. However did you deal with it all?”

“Obviously, I channel all the phlogiston into the wood of the hull, where it can be safely absorbed,” said Victor dismissively. “Adding anything like radiators or chimneys to dissipate the phlogiston would add so much weight the Sailfin would never get off the ground.”

“You send the phlogiston into the hull?! Is that safe?”

“Of course! Don’t you know anything?! Wizards have been using trees as a phlogiston sink for hundreds of years.”

“But those are trees. They’re alive. They transpire the phlogiston as they grow and convert it into their _élan vital_. The wood of the Sailfin isn’t growing. Surely the phlogiston will accumulate until…”

“Please, don’t lecture me! The wood has never come anywhere close to saturation.”

“But how far did you fly the previous versions?”

“Barber managed to get the last one as far as Cumberland before he crashed it into Haystacks.”

“Oh at least he had a soft landing then.”

“No, not a Haystack. Haystacks. The mountain. There wasn’t anything left of the Sailfin except kindling. Of course, Barber walked away without a scratch.”

“’I got a very nasty torn finger nail let me tell you,” protested Henry, “an’ I spoiled my good britches!”

 “But… you’ve only ever flown a Sailfin for what, one hundred miles?” asked Isabelle in rising alarm. “We’ve just flown it from Widdershins to Cornwall and back! I’d have to calculate the theoretical phlogiston capacity of seasoned oak from the Transylvania Polygnostic University Tables of Comparative Element Absorbance but surely…”

“Don’t waste my time with publications from some highly dubious foreign University if you please!” snapped Victor. “I can assure you as the only competent wizard here that there is no…”

No doubt he would have continued, had he not been interrupted by his entire workshop exploding in a single enormous spectacular fireball. Pieces of burning wreckage sailed high into the air in all directions, trailing flame and smoke.  Isabelle looked up and saw a large piece of burning timber heading straight for her. With a shriek she leapt into Henry’s arms just in time to avoid being squashed. Henry’s knees sagged under the weight, but he manfully held on.

“Ah, I love the smell of phlogiston in the morning,” he said, taking a deep breath.

“I think the Sailfin may need a little more product development before it is ready for general release,” remarked Isabelle to Victor innocently. He wasn’t listening. He was running back towards the burning wreckage of his workshop, screaming like a little girl.

“Do you think we should go and help?” Isabelle asked Henry.

“Nah,” he replied, “we’d only get our ‘ands dirty. Lucky ‘e’s too mean to employ any assistants, otherwise someone might ‘ave got ‘urt.”

“Right. So, you can put me down now.” Isabelle was aware that her current position was not at all consistent with her image as a modern independent young woman.

Henry gave her his most winning smile. “Are you sure?” Isabelle decided that her image could be put on hold for an hour or so.

“On second thoughts, carry me to my Vardo, Henry! All this excitement has made me quite faint!”

**Author's Note:**

> _Henry Barber Esquire, Ms Isabelle Holt and Mr Victor Cunningham are the creations of Kate Ashwin._   
>  _Transylvania Polygnostic University is the Creation of Studio Foglio._


End file.
